Xylophone (5 page)

Carver slowly held up his arms to concede defeat.

“You want to punch me, go ahead. If it’ll make you

feel better and calm you down, go ahead.”

Just like that, it was over. Carver’s invitation

yielded nothing more than a stare. Dare couldn’t

imagine how he looked, didn’t want to think about

how he felt. A familiar nonphysical weight seemed

to be sinking him into the couch cushions.

“You know I can’t punch worth a shit,” he

muttered.

After regarding him a few seconds longer—

and, Christ, that mixture of disgust and pity made

Dare want to throw up—Carver rose and left the

room.

SLEEP wouldn’t come.

Again Dare heard those xylophone notes,

throaty and taunting, only pretending to be happy-

go-lucky. At one time they’d hung from his

bedroom ceiling, hung there for two years, slipping

down invisible filaments when night fell, bloated

balls with limbs but no features, spiders spinning

and dropping. He’d clamp his hands over his ears,

fold his arms over his face.

“It started as a kind of courtship song, or

game. In faraway Germany.”

The notes wanted to fill each small cavity of

his body. They wanted to take up residence within

him.

He wasn’t strong enough to turn them away.

Hi-ho the derry-o…

The pervert in the ground.

“No!”

Heart hammering, Dare pushed and kicked

away his comforter. He swung to the right as he

lifted his body to reach up and click on the lamp.

Jonah’s card lay on the nightstand beside, of all

things, a pack of condoms and a bag of Skittles,

candy he’d loved since the Time Before.

He snatched up the card, ripped it in half, and

tossed the rent rectangle into the junk-littered

darkness beyond his bed.

Chapter Five

“ I NEED to know how you found out about

Battaglia.”

Dare paced. The phone felt like a parasite

against his face. Stepping over or kicking aside the

clutter in his bedroom—a heaping laundry basket,

teetering stacks of CDs and DVDs, stroke

magazines and costume catalogues—he silently

cursed himself for fitting the halves of that

business card together out of sheer numbskulled

curiosity.

Rain streaked down the windows. How

appropriately dreary for a Monday. And for

Dare’s state of mind.

“You sound angry. I didn’t mean to upset

you.” A pleasant voice. Midrange, mild.

So what?
“Listen, Jacob—”

“Jonah.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. I’m more used to ‘Jacob’

because I’ve known a few.”
Oops. Forget about

getting laid.
“I didn’t mean to sound so abrupt, but

I’m not exactly giddy about seeing you again. I

mean, shit, you just threw that name at me out of

the blue. It was like a knee to the nuts.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Jonah sighed. “I

apologize for that. It occurred to me later that my

approach wasn’t the smoothest.”

“Hey, it’s done. Don’t apologize. Just

explain.” Dare dropped onto his rumpled bed,

forehead in hand.

“Fair enough.” Jonah took a deep breath.

“When I saw you watching me at the pavilion, I

figured it was for the same reason I was watching

you—because each of us recognized the other as

one of Dr. Battaglia’s clients.”

“Former client, at least in my case.”

“Mine too.”

Now this was
really
getting confusing. Dare

had had one thirty-minute private session with the

therapist and a subsequent conversation that had

lasted no more than five minutes. How could Jonah

have seen him with her?

“The only reason I noticed you at the

pavilion,” Dare said, “was because you… looked

too young to spend an afternoon dancing to a polka

band.” Obviously not the
only
reason, but the other

one was irrelevant now.

“Oh. I didn’t realize that. So I guess you
don’t

remember what happened three years ago.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Still, Dare couldn’t

deny he was intrigued.

“I saw you storm out of that room in

Battaglia’s office suite where she holds group

sessions. Where the TOA group was about to meet.

You looked upset. And I—”

Abruptly, Dare lifted his head. “Wait. You

were signed up for the group?”

“Yeah, that’s why I was there.”

Dare had never had a chance even to see the

other members. He’d stormed out, all right. He’d

bailed
out, some fifteen minutes before the

Triumph Over Abuse group was to assemble for

its first meeting. From that moment on, he’d never

had anything more to do with Marie Battaglia, in

spite of her solicitous phone calls.

He simply couldn’t bring himself to dredge up

all that Pankin crap.

“I pulled out after one session,” Jonah went

on.

“The

whole

setup

made

me

really

uncomfortable. I’m not very good in those

situations—you know, talking in front of an

audience and all that.”

You bet, “and all that
.” Like laying down

your naked shame, a specimen on a dissecting tray,

and letting strangers poke around in it, make notes

and comments about it. “All right, so we’re both

therapy dropouts. So what’s left to talk about?”

“Everything we never got to talk about three

years ago—what happened to us, and why, and the

individuals who… who hurt us.”

Dare winced. His first impulse was to put up

a wall by saying,
I was never hurt. I cruised

through it just fine.
But a noxious smudge was

wafting through him, a lingering vestige of the fire

that had burned and blistered his soul, and it

would’ve belied any nonchalant denial.

Then a pure, clear memory surfaced. “Were

you the guy standing at the reception desk when I

left?”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been getting at.”

Dare’s brow contracted as he remembered.

Jonah had turned his head when Dare shot

past. Anybody standing at the counter could see the

short hallway that ran from the waiting room

farther into the suite, where the doctor’s private

office, a restroom, and a spacious lounge were

located. Dare had just come through the door that

led to that hallway, because he’d just been

speaking with Dr. Battaglia. Jonah must have

overheard their conversation.

“What was his name?”
Jonah had asked

gently.
“Howard Pankin,”
Dare had answered

without stopping, without even glancing at the

speaker.
“Reverend Clayton C. Wallace,”
the

disembodied voice had said at Dare’s back, just as

Dare exited the suite.

Afterward, he hadn’t given the incident much

thought. The brief exchange seemed too much like

something

he’d

imagined—an

assertion

of

innocence to a kindred spirit, a fellow sufferer

whose understanding was implicit.

I didn’t do anything wrong. Something

wrong was done to me. By a man I knew as….

Through the simple act of naming their

monsters, he and Jonah, who was then a complete

stranger, had thrown off at least a little of their

guilt and granted each other absolution. It had been

a surreal moment, and more liberating than Dare

had realized at the time. The relief he’d felt

afterward—a small peace, but peace nonetheless

—hadn’t come from getting out of that TOA group.

It had come (he now knew) from speaking Pankin’s

name to Jonah Day, and hearing the name Jonah

had spoken. Finally, after so many bleak years,

he’d connected with someone who kept the same

secret.

Dare hunched over his thighs and rested his

forearms there. He tried to pull his thoughts

together. “You want us to get together so we can

unload on each other?”

“Something like that. Unless you don’t need to

anymore. Unless you got help somewhere else and

you’ve moved on.”

“No. I couldn’t afford it. That was another

reason I dumped Battaglia.”

Dare knew his folks could have afforded it,

easily, if he’d come clean about the episode while

he was still a minor and covered by their

insurance. But he hadn’t. For a whole reeking

tangle of reasons, he’d shoved it down and

slapped a lid on it.

Until, that is, Pankin had resurfaced in his life

like a bloated corpse in a lake. That was three

years ago, and a long time after their liaison had

ended. As it turned out, Dare still couldn’t bring

himself to loosen the clamps.

“I haven’t moved on either,” Jonah said.

“More and more things have been reminding me of

that. I know I have to do something. There’s so

much about me that’s….” He suddenly stopped

talking, and Dare felt an unexpected trickle of

concern for him.

He tried to replace it with disdain. He

himself had managed to keep his shit together for

thirteen

years.
He
had never become so

pathetically needful he’d reached out to a stranger.

In fact, Dare hadn’t even reached out to a

friend or family member. Even when, three years

earlier, he’d finally confessed to his former

relationship with Pankin and let himself be talked

into therapy, he wasn’t reaching out. He was

simply divulging information his parents and

brother hadn’t been aware of, and in the vaguest

terms possible. He’d taken their advice about

therapy just to get them off his back.

“You must think I’m crazy,” Jonah said,

breaking the heavy silence. “It’s just that when I

saw you at the pavilion, I thought
, ‘
Maybe this is

it. Maybe this is my chance to talk one-on-one with

someone who’s been there.’”

Dare hadn’t been able to muster any disdain

for Jonah. Not a lick. How could he? Instead, he

heard Jonah courageously speaking a minister’s

name, and saw him waltzing with his grandmother

to the strains of “Fascination,” and felt the allure

of that oh-so-green gaze.

“Are you gay, by any chance?” he asked

quietly.

Fast as a sprung jack-in-the-box, “no” came

through the phone. Then, more hesitantly, “I mean,

I don’t know
what
I am. The abuse started when I

was eleven. It didn’t stop ’til I was fifteen. It

could’ve really… probably did… mess with, you

know….”

“Your sense of your own sexuality.” Dare

dropped his forehead to his hand. This had already

gone too far. His spirit felt weighted, but he

couldn’t just cut Jonah off. Not now. “I understand

how that could happen.”

“Do you really?”

“Yes.”

“Has it been the same for you?”

Oh, Christ, the
hope
in his voice, the hope he

wasn’t alone. Still, it wouldn’t do any good to lie

to him. “No, not really. I was a little older than you

when
my
thing started. I pretty much knew what I

was about. In that regard, anyway.”

Dare’s stomach ached. From eleven to fifteen.

Jesus. He’d been thirteen and fourteen throughout

his own ordeal, and he’d already figured out by

then that he liked boys. This poor guy still didn’t

know how to define himself. And seemed afraid to

find out.

“Well, haven’t you had any… indicators over

the years?” Dare squeezed his eyes shut and

scratched at his forehead.
Why am I getting in

deeper?
“You know, like… reactions to girls

versus reactions to guys. Feelings of attraction.

Fantasies. Urges. That sort of thing.” He couldn’t

get more explicit without embarrassing the hell out

of both of them. He couldn’t say,
Dude, this is

pretty simple. Who has the power to make you

bone up—males, females, or both?

“I’m not a virgin,” Jonah said a bit tartly, “if

that’s what you’re wondering. But during the

period I was sexually active, I was kind of…

fucked up. A
lot
fucked up. So all that fooling

around didn’t shed much light. I was just randomly

promiscuous.”

The